LINGUIST List 13.2132

Tue Aug 20 2002

Qs: Benue-Congo Cognates, Ergative/"that-trace"

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

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The Benue-Congo classification seems to depend almost entirely on
grammatical characteristics like noun-classes. Is anyone aware of a
set of words which have cognates in the non-Batoid languages (like
Yoruba, Nupe, Igbo, Jukun, Tarok, Edo)?
Language-Family: Niger-Congo; Code: NC

Does anyone out there have any information or references on
"that-trace" effects in languages that are plausibly analyzed as
syntactically ergative? What I want to know is whether, in such
languages, "that-trace" effects relate to S/A, as they do in
nominative-accusative languages, or S/P, as one might expect for a
syntactically ergative language.
Thanks muchly.
Yehuda N. Falk
Department of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel
http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msyfalk/